Proactive

How to spell proactive

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce proactive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does proactive mean?

1. adjectiveActing in advance to prepare for or prevent a situation, rather than waiting to respond to it.

Proactive in a sentence

• A proactive manager schedules maintenance before the machines break down.

• Taking a proactive approach to savings means setting money aside every month.

Where does proactive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a relatively modern word, built from the familiar Latin prefix pro-, meaning 'forward' or 'in advance', attached to 'active', which traces back through Latin activus to the verb agere, meaning 'to do' or 'to drive'. It was deliberately coined in the twentieth century as the deliberate opposite of 'reactive', describing a person who acts ahead of events rather than merely responding to them after they happen. Psychologists used it from the 1930s onward, and the neurologist Viktor Frankl gave it a moral weight when describing people who take responsibility for their own choices. It entered mainstream business and self-help vocabulary in the late twentieth century, especially after Stephen Covey championed it in management writing. Because the prefix simply bolts onto the existing word 'active', the spelling is regular: the only thing to remember is the single 'pro' joined cleanly to 'active' with no extra letters.

How the word is built

• pro- (forward, in advance)
• act (from Latin agere, to do or drive)
• -ive (adjective suffix)